Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Let’s be honest, we’ve all laughed at a good adulting meme that so adequately describes the difficulties of trying to be a grown up and do the responsible thing.

I will be the first one to admit that the majority of the first half of my twenties has been a complete train wreck. I didn’t own a rain coat for most of it. A rain coat. Even small children own rain coats. I also literally did not understand the phrase take it with a grain of salt until like two weeks ago. Okay....maybe it was more than 2 weeks ago but I spent a good bit of time not really knowing what that phrase meant. You can also add "Dont count your chickens before they hatch" to that. So you know, there’s a lot that I have yet to master about adulthood.

But I have become so incredibly annoyed with a generation of people who keep complaining and making t-shirts about how hard it is to adult. Adult is not a verb. It is an adjective. It describes the stage of life that you are in and will continue to be in. You don’t get a choice about that, my friend. You are an adult. You will never be a child again and it is time that you just get past that fact and accept that this, in all its glory, is not a choice.

Your adulthood is just a fact.

When we treat adulthood like a choice we create a lifestyle of really horrible habits. We justify and make jokes about our really poor choices because adulting has become a thing we do or don’t do today.

I love you enough to tell you this because I was the person doing it like eight and half seconds ago. Eating doughnuts for breakfast every morning and watching Netflix until 2 PM in your bed when you’re in your twenties is not cute. It is not worthy of a “like” on Facebook or Instagram.

Being a human is hard sometimes, but the hard parts about it are not your laundry, making your bed, or taking a shower. Difficulty is not looking at your bank account and being sad that you can’t buy more Starbucks.

When we say it out loud, I think we can see how selfish it is: I’m feeding a culture that says life is hard because I want to be able to eat Oreos and not gain weight, or have the luxury of walking into Target and spending $200 on pointless crap.

We are a product of our choices, the things we do and the things we say. If I keep telling myself that the struggle is realat Target and everyone spends this kind of money because adulting is hard and budgets are hard when I wake up without any money for my future, at least I can laugh about it. I can post about it on Instagram and get a few hundred nods of approval.

Those things are not the hard part about adulthood and if you actually believe that they are, you live in a very small world. You live in a bubble known as entitlement and it’s a really dangerous place to stay. It’s a dangerous thing to joke about. It feeds bad habits. It’s a bubble that I’ve known well and it has caused more grief in my adulthood than maybe anything else.

You know what I love about my grandmothers’ generation? Those women got out of bed every morning, got dressed, took on the world, and sometimes never left their own home to do it. They’d wrangle seven kids looking like they just stepped out of a magazine. I never understood it and I actually thought it was incredibly pointless. But throughout the years of listening to their stories when I wasn't younger.... I finally started to understand why.

They did it because getting out of bed, looking presentable, making breakfast, and getting things in order is good stewardship. It is being thankful. It is loving themselves and others well. It is taking care of what God gave them. It is living a lifestyle of worship, of having a grateful heart. It is saying to God: I love and cherish this sweet life that you’ve given me and it is way way more than I deserve. I’m going to take care of it, I’m going to treat it like the gold that it is.

That’s not to say that some of them didn’t have careers. Both of my Grandmothers worked. They showed up for themselves, their kids, their husbands, and worked outside of their homes. They kicked butt (am I allowed to say that about my grandmothers?). They were moms, wives, workers, church members, community members, and more. They were not adulting, they just accepted the fact that they were adults. Most of their generation accepted this a lot younger than I did.

The point of all of this is not to say that we have to be perfect. I will have times of rest. I will also still have some days where I wear sweatpants and watch a few hours of Really bad tv. . I will have times of eating pizza (every Friday) and wishing that it didn’t have so many calories. But that’s not an acceptable daily lifestyle and it’s not a culture that I want to encourage.

God handed me adulthood, sometimes it’s hard, in fact....it's really really hard. ....but the fact remains that I don’t get a choice. But how I honor this gift of life and how I choose to respond my God-given responsibilities is entirely up to me.

And In true adulting fashion, I am writing this as I just handed my child a bowl of M&M's for breakfast, it's raining outside and I still don't own a raincoat at 33 years old.

About me

Jessica

I am a artistic soul that loves music, art, and anything in between. Readling a good book is the best, and I always get sad when it ends... I love shoes, watermelon jolly ranchers, and the beach..I tend to speak before I think..but there is always a truth to what I say! I have a 9 year old son that brings out everything that is best and worst in me..Sometimes when I look at him its like I'm looking in a mirror..Being his mother is my greatest accomplishment... I have been married to my best friend for 6 years..He truly amazes me everyday..I am not perfect and I love learning about myself day to day..some good and some bad...but all in all..I kinda like me.. :)